Of all the nooks of London associated with the
memory of that good giant of literature, Dr. Johnson, not one is more sacred to those who love
that great and wise man than Bolt Court. To this
monastic court Johnson came in 1776, and remained till that December day in 1784, when a
procession of all the learned and worthy men who
honoured him followed his body to its grave in the
Abbey, near the feet of Shakespeare and by the
side of Garrick. The great scholar, whose ways
and sayings, whose rough hide and tender heart,
are so familiar to us—thanks to that faithful parasite
who secured an immortality by getting up behind
his triumphal chariot—came to Bolt Court from
Johnson's Court, whither he had flitted from
Inner Temple Lane, where he was living when the
young Scotch barrister who was afterwards his
biographer first knew him. His strange household
of fretful and disappointed almspeople seems as well
known as our own. At the head of these pensioners was the daughter of a Welsh doctor, (a blind
old lady named Williams), who had written some
trivial poems; Mrs. Desmoulins, an old Staffordshire lady, her daughter, and a Miss Carmichael.
The relationships of these fretful and quarrelsome
old maids Dr. Johnson has himself sketched, in a
letter to Mr. and Mrs. Thrale:—"Williams
hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and
does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them
both; Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them."
This Levett was a poor eccentric apothecary, whom
Johnson supported, and who seems to have been
a charitable man.

The annoyance of such a menagerie of angular
oddities must have driven Johnson more than ever
to his clubs, where he could wrestle with the best
intellects of the day, and generally retire victorious. He had done nearly all his best work
by this time, and was sinking into the sere and
yellow leaf, not, like Macbeth, with the loss of
honour, but with love, obedience, troops of friends,
and golden opinions from all sorts of people. His
Titanic labour, the Dictionary, he had achieved
chiefly in Gough Square; his "Rasselas"—that
grave and wise Oriental story—he had written in a
few days, in Staple's Inn, to defray the expenses of
his mother's funeral. In Bolt Court he, however,
produced his "Lives of the Poets," a noble compendium of criticism, defaced only by the bitter
Tory depreciation of Milton, and injured by the
insertion of many worthless and the omission of
several good poets.

It is pleasant to think of some of the events
that happened while Johnson lived in Bolt Court.
Here he exerted himself with all the ardour of his
nature to soothe the last moments of that wretched
man, Dr. Dodd, who was hanged for forgery. From
Bolt Court he made those frequent excursions to
the Thrales, at Streatham, where the rich brewer
and his brilliant wife gloried in the great London
lion they had captured. To Bolt Court came Johnson's friends Reynolds and Gibbon, and Garrick,
and Percy, and Langton; but poor Goldsmith had
died before Johnson left Johnson's Court. To
Bolt Court he stalked home the night of his
memorable quarrel with Dr. Percy, no doubt regretting the violence and boisterous rudeness
with which he had attacked an amiable and gifted
man. From Bolt Court he walked to service at
St. Clement's Church on the day he rejoiced in
comparing the animation of Fleet Street with the
desolation of the Hebrides. It was from Bolt
Court Boswell drove Johnson to dine with General
Paoli, a drive memorable for the fact that on
that occasion Johnson uttered his first and only
recorded pun.

Johnson was at Bolt Court when the Gordon Riots
broke out, and he describes them to Mrs. Thrale.
Boswell gives a pleasant sketch of a party at Bolt
Court, when Mrs. Hall (a sister of Wesley) was
there, and Mr. Allen, a printer; Johnson produced his silver salvers, and it was "a great
day." It was on this occasion that the conversation fell on apparitions, and Johnson, always
superstitious to the last degree, told the story of
hearing his mother's voice call him one day at
Oxford (probably at a time when his brain was overworked). On this great occasion also, Johnson,
talked at by Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Williams at the
same moment, gaily quoted the line from the
Beggars' Opera,—
"But two at a time there's no mortal can bear,"

and Boswell playfully compared the great man
to Captain Macheath. Imagine Mrs. Williams, old
and peevish; Mrs. Hall, lean, lank, and preachy;
Johnson, rolling in his chair like Polyphemus at a
debate; Boswell, stooping forward on the perpetual listen; Mr. Levett, sour and silent; Frank,
the black servant, proud of the silver salvers—and
you have the group as in a picture.

In Bolt Court we find Johnson now returning
from pleasant dinners with Wilkes and Garrick,
Malone and Dr. Burney; now sitting alone over
his Greek Testament, or praying with his black
servant, Frank. We like to picture him on that
Good Friday morning (1783), when he and Boswell,
returning from service at St. Clement's, rested on
the stone seat at the garden-door in Bolt Court,
talking about gardens and country hospitality.

Then, finally, we come to almost the last scene
of all, when the sick man addressed to his kind
physician, Brocklesby, that pathetic passage of
Shakespeare's,—
"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart ?"

Round Johnson's dying bed gathered many wise
and good men. To Burke he said, "I must be
in a wretched state indeed, when your company
would not be a delight to me." To another friend
he remarked solemnly, but in his old grand manner,
"Sir, you cannot conceive with what acceleration
I advance towards death." Nor did his old vehemence and humour by any means forsake him, for
he described a man who sat up to watch him
"as an idiot, sir; awkward as a turnspit when first
put into the wheel, and sleepy as a dormouse."
His remaining hours were spent in fervent prayer.
The last words he uttered were those of benediction upon the daughter of a friend who came to
ask his blessing.

Some years before Dr. Johnson's death, when
the poet Rogers was a young clerk of literary proclivities at his father's bank, he one day stole surreptitiously to Bolt Court, to daringly show some of
his fledgeling poems to the great Polyphemus of
literature. He and young Maltby, an ancestor of
the late Bishop of Durham, crept blushingly through
the quiet court, and on arriving at the sacred door
on the west side, ascended the steps and knocked
at the door; but the awful echo of that knocker
struck terror to the young debutants' hearts, and
before Frank Barber, the Doctor's old negro footman, could appear, the two lads, like street-boys
who had perpetrated a mischievous runaway knock,
took to their heels and darted back into noisy
Fleet Street. Mr. Jesse, who has collected so
many excellent anecdotes, some even original, in
his three large volumes on "London's Celebrated
Characters and Places," says that the elder Mr.
Disraeli, singularly enough, used in society to relate an almost similar adventure as a youth. Eager
for literary glory, but urged towards the counter
by his sober-minded relations, he enclosed some
of his best verses to the celebrated Dr. Johnson,
and modestly solicited from the terrible critic an
opinion of their value. Having waited some time
in vain for a reply, the ambitious Jewish youth
at last (December 13, 1784) resolved to face the
lion in his den, and rapping tremblingly (as his predecessor, Rogers), heard with dismay the knocker
echo on the metal. We may imagine the feelings
of the young votary at the shrine of learning,
when the servant (probably Frank Barber), who
slowly opened the door, informed him that Dr.
Johnson had breathed his last only a few short
hours before.

Mr. Timbs reminds us of another story of Dr.
Johnson, which will not be out of place here. It
is an excellent illustration of the keen sagacity and
forethought of that great man's mind. One evening
Dr. Johnson, looking from his dim Bolt Court
window, saw the slovenly lamp-lighter of those
days ascending a ladder (just as Hogarth has
drawn him in the "Rake's Progress"), and fill the
little receptacle in the globular lamp with detestable
whale-oil. Just as he got down the ladder the dull
light wavered out. Skipping up the ladder again,
the son of Prometheus lifted the cover, thrust the
torch he carried into the heated vapour rising
from the wick, and instantly the ready flame
sprang restored to life. "Ah," said the old seer,
"one of these days the streets of London will be
lighted by smoke."

Johnson's house (No. 8), according to Mr. Noble,
was not destroyed by fire in 1819, as Mr. Timbs
and other writers assert. The house destroyed was
Bensley the printer's (next door to No. 8), the
successor of Johnson's friend, Allen, who in 1772
published Manning's Saxon, Gothic, and Latin
Dictionary, and died in 1780. In Bensley's destructive fire all the plates and stock of Dallaway's
"History of Sussex" were consumed. Johnson's
house, says Mr. Noble, was in 1858 purchased by
the Stationers' Company, and fitted up as a cheap
school (six shillings a quarter). In 1861 Mr. Foss,
Master of the Company, initiated a fund, and since
then a university scholarship has been founded—sic
itur ad astra. The back room, first floor, in which
the great man died, had been pulled down by Mr.
Bensley, to make way for a staircase. Bensley
was one of the first introducers of the German
invention of steam-printing.

DR. JOHNSON'S HOUSE IN BOLT COURT (see page 112).

At "Dr. Johnson's" tavern, established forty years
ago (now the Albert Club), the well-known society
of the "Lumber Troop" once drained their porter
and held their solemn smokings. This gallant
force of supposititious fighting men "came out" with
great force during the Reform Riots of 1830. These
useless disturbances originated in a fussy, foolish
warning letter, written by John Key, the Lord Mayor
elect (he was generally known in the City as Don
Key after this), to the Duke of Wellington, then as
terribly unpopular with the English Reformers as
he had been with the French after the battle of
Waterloo, urging him (the duke) if he came with
King William and Queen Adelaide to dine with
the new Lord Mayor, (his worshipful self), to
come "strongly and sufficiently guarded." This
imprudent step greatly offended the people, who
were also just then much vexed with the severities
of Peel's obnoxious new police. The result was
that the new king and queen (for the not overbeloved George IV. had only died in June of
that year) thought it better to decline coming
to the City festivities altogether. Great, then,
was even the Tory indignation, and the fattest
alderman trotted about, eager to discuss the
grievance, the waste of half-cooked turtle, and
the general folly and enormity of the Lord Mayor
elect's conduct. Sir Claudius Hunter, who had
shared in the Lord Mayor's fears, generously
marched to his aid. In a published statement that
he made, he enumerated the force available for
the defence of the (in his mind) endangered
City in the following way:—

A TEA PARTY AT DR. JOHNSON'S (see page 113).

Ward Constables

400

Fellowship, Ticket, and Tackle Porters

250

Firemen

150

Corn Porters

100

Extra men hired

130

City Police or own men

54

Tradesmen with emblems in the procession

300

Some gentlemen called the Lumber Troopers

150

The Artillery Company

150

The East India Volunteers

600

Total of all comers

2,284

In the same statement Sir Claudius says:—"The Lumber Troop are a respectable smoking
club, well known to every candidate for a seat in
Parliament for London, and most famed for the
quantity of tobacco they consume and the porter
they drink, which, I believe (from my own observation, made nineteen years ago, when I was a candidate for that office), is the only liquor allowed.
They were to have had no pay, and I am sure they
would have done their best."

Along the line of procession, to oppose this
civic force, the right worshipful but foolish man
reckoned there would be some 150,000 persons.
With all these aldermanic fears, and all these
irritating precautions, a riot naturally took place.
On Monday, November 8th, that glib, unsatisfactory
man, Orator Hunt, the great demagogue of the
day, addressed a Reform meeting at the Rotunda,
in Blackfriars Road. At half-past eleven, when
the Radical gentleman, famous for his white hat
(the lode-star of faction), retired, a man suddenly
waved a tricolour flag (it was the year, remember,
of the Revolution in Paris), with the word "Reform" painted upon it, and a preconcerted cry
was raised by the more violent of, "Now for
the West End!" About one thousand men then
rushed over Blackfriars bridge, shouting, "Reform!"
"Down with the police!" "No Peel!" "No Wellington!" Hurrying along the Strand, the mob
first proceeded to Earl Bathurst's, in Downing
Street. A foolish gentleman of the house, hearing the cries, came out on the balcony, armed
with a brace of pistols, and declared he would
fire on the first man who attempted to enter the
place. Another gentleman at this moment came
out, and very sensibly took the pistols from his
friend, on which the mob retired. The rioters
were then making for the House of Commons,
but were stopped by a strong line of police, just
arrived in time from Scotland Yard. One hundred
and forty more men soon joined the constables,
and a general fight ensued, in which many heads
were quickly broken, and the Reform flag was captured. Three of the rioters were arrested, and
taken to the watch-house in the Almonry in Westminster. A troop of Royal Horse Guards (blue)
remained during the night ready in the court of the
Horse Guards, and bands of policemen paraded
the streets.

On Tuesday the riots continued. About halfpast five p.m., 300 or 400 persons, chiefly boys,
came along the Strand, shouting, "No Peel!"
"Down with the raw lobsters!" (the new police);
"This way, my lads; we'll give it them!" At
the back of the menageries at Charing Cross the
police rushed upon them, and after a skirmish put
them to flight. At seven o'clock the vast crowd
by Temple Bar compelled every coachman and
passenger in a coach, as a passport, to pull off
his hat and shout "Huzza!" Stones were thrown,
and attempts were made to close the gates of the
Bar. The City marshals, however, compelled them
to be reopened, and opposed the passage of the
mob to the Strand, but the pass was soon forced.
The rioters in Pickett Place pelted the police with
stones and pieces of wood, broken from the
scaffolding of the Law Institute, then building in
Chancery Lane. Another mob of about 500
persons ran up Piccadilly to Apsley House
and hissed and hooted the stubborn, unprogressive
old Duke, Mr. Peel, and the police; the constables, however, soon dispersed them. The same
evening dangerous mobs collected in Bethnal
Green, Spitalfields, and Whitechapel, one party
of them displaying tricoloured flags. They broke
a lamp and a window or two, but did little else.
Alas for poor Sir Claudius and his profound computations! His 2,284 fighting loyal men dwindled
down to 600, including even those strange hybrids,
the firemen-watermen; and as for the gallant Lumber
Troop, they were nowhere visible to the naked eye.

To Bolt Court that scourge of King George III.,
William Cobbett, came from Fleet Street to sell his
Indian corn, for which no one cared, and to print
and publish his twopenny Political Register, for
which the London Radicals of that day hungered.
Nearly opposite the office of "this good hater,"
says Mr. Timbs, Wright (late Kearsley) kept
shop, and published a searching criticism on
Cobbett's excellent English Grammar as soon
as it appeared. We only wonder that Cobbett
did not reply to him as Johnson did to a friend
after he knocked Osborne (the grubbing bookseller
of Gray's Inn Gate) down with a blow—"Sir, he
was impertinent, and I beat him."

A short biographical sketch of Cobbett will not
be inappropriate here. This sturdy Englishman,
born in the year 1762, was the son of an honest
and industrious yeoman, who kept an inn called
the "Jolly Farmer," at Farnham, in Surrey. "My
first occupation," says Cobbett, "was driving the
small birds from the turnip seed and the rooks
from the peas. When I first trudged a-field with
my wooden bottle and my satchel over my
shoulder, I was hardly able to climb the gates
and stiles." In 1783 the restless lad (a plant
grown too high for the pot) ran away to London,
and turned lawyer's clerk. At the end of nine
months he enlisted, and sailed for Nova Scotia.
Before long he became sergeant-major, over the
heads of thirty other non-commissioned officers.
Frugal and diligent, the young soldier soon educated
himself. Discharged at his own request in 1791,
he married a respectable girl, to whom he had
before entrusted £150 hard-earned savings. Obtaining a trial against four officers of his late regiment
for embezzlement of stores, for some strange reason
Cobbett fled to France on the eve of the trial,
but finding the king of that country dethroned, he
started at once for America. At Philadelphia
he boldly began as a high Tory bookseller, and
denounced Democracy in his virulent "Porcupine
Papers." Finally, overwhelmed with actions for
libel, Cobbett in 1800 returned to England.
Failing with a daily paper and a bookseller's shop,
Cobbett then started his Weekly Register, which
for thirty years continued to express the changes
of his honest but impulsive and vindictive mind.
Gradually—it is said, owing to some slight shown
him by Pitt (more probably from real conviction)—Cobbett grew Radical and progressive, and in 1809
was fined £500 for libels on the Irish Government.
In 1817 he was fined £1,000 and imprisoned two
years for violent remarks about some Ely militiamen
who had been flogged under a guard of fixed
bayonets. This punishment he never forgave. He
followed up his Register by his Twopenny Trash,
of which he eventually sold 100,000 a number.
The Six Acts being passed—as he boasted, to gag
him—he fled, in 1817, again to America. The
persecuted man returned to England in 1819,
bringing with him, much to the amusement of
the Tory lampooners, the bones of that foul man,
Tom Paine, the infidel, whom (in 1796) this changeful politician had branded as "base, malignant,
treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous." During
the Queen Caroline trial Cobbett worked heart and
soul for that questionable martyr. He went out
to Shooter's Hill to welcome her to London, and
boasted of having waved a laurel bough above
her head.

In 1825 he wrote a scurrilous "History of the
Reformation" (by many still attributed to a priest),
in which he declared Luther, Calvin, and Beza
to be the greatest ruffians that ever disgraced the
world. In his old age, too late to be either brilliant or useful, Cobbett got into Parliament,
being returned in 1832 (thanks to the Reform Bill)
member for Oldham. He died at his house
near Farnham, in 1835. Cobbett was an egotist,
it must be allowed, and a violent-tempered, vindictive man; but his honesty, his love of truth and
liberty, few who are not blinded by party opinion
can doubt. His writings are remarkable for vigorous
and racy Saxon, as full of vituperation as Rabelais's,
and as terse and simple as Swift's.

Mr. Grant, in his pleasant book, "Random
Recollections of the House of Commons," written
circa 1834, gives us an elaborate full-length
portrait of old Cobbett. He was, he says, not less
than six feet high, and broad and athletic in
proportion. His hair was silver-white, his complexion ruddy as a farmer's. Till his small eyes
sparkled with laughter, he looked a mere dullpated clodpole. His dress was a light, loose, grey
tail-coat, a white waistcoat, and sandy kerseymere
breeches, and he usually walked about the House
with both his hands plunged into his breeches
pockets. He had an eccentric, half-malicious way
of sometimes suddenly shifting his seat, and on
one important night, big with the fate of Peel's
Administration, deliberately anchored down in the
very centre of the disgusted Tories and at the very
back of Sir Robert's bench, to the infinite annoyance of the somewhat supercilious party.

We next penetrate into Gough Square, in search
of the great lexicographer.

As far as can be ascertained from Boswell,
Dr. Johnson resided at Gough Square from
1748 to 1758, an eventful period of his life, and one
of struggle, pain, and difficulty. In this gloomy
side square near Fleet Street, he achieved many
results and abandoned many hopes. Here he
nursed his hypochondria—the nightmare of his life
—and sought the only true relief in hard work.
Here he toiled over books, drudging for Cave
and Dodsley. Here he commenced both the
Rambler and the Idler, and formed his acquaintance with Bennet Langton. Here his wife
died, and left him more than ever a prey to his
natural melancholy; and here he toiled on his
great work, the Dictionary, in which he and six
amanuenses effected what it took all the French
Academicians to perform for their language.

A short epitome of what this great man accomplished while in Gough Square will clearly recall
to our readers his way of life while in that locality.
In 1749, Johnson formed a quiet club in Ivy
Lane, wrote that fine paraphrase of Juvenal,
"The Vanity of Human Wishes," and brought
out, with dubious success, under Garrick's auspices,
his tragedy of Irene. In 1750, he commenced
the Rambler. In 1752, the year his wife died,
he laboured on at the Dictionary. In 1753,
he became acquainted with Bennet Langton.
In 1754 he wrote the life of his early patron,
Cave, who died that year. In 1755, the great
Dictionary, begun in 1747, was at last published,
and Johnson wrote that scathing letter to the
Earl of Chesterfield, who, too late, thrust upon
him the patronage the poor scholar had once
sought in vain. In 1756, the still struggling man
was arrested for a paltry debt of £5 18s., from
which Richardson the worthy relieved him. In
1758, when he began the Idler, Johnson is described as "being in as easy and pleasant a state
of existence as constitutional unhappiness ever
permitted him to enjoy."

While the Dictionary was going forward, "Johnson," says Boswell, "lived part of the time in Holborn, part in Gough Square (Fleet Street); and
he had an upper room fitted up like a countinghouse for the purpose, in which he gave to the
copyists their several tasks. The words, partly
taken from other dictionaries and partly supplied
by himself, having been first written down with
space left between them, he delivered in writing
their etymologies, definitions, and various significations. The authorities were copied from the
books themselves, in which he had marked the
passages with a black-lead pencil, the traces of
which could be easily effaced. I have seen several
of them in which that trouble had not been taken,
so that they were just as when used by the copyists. It is remarkable that he was so attentive to
the choice of the passages in which words were
authorised, that one may read page after page of
his Dictionary with improvement and pleasure;
and it should not pass unobserved, that he has
quoted no author whose writings had a tendency to
hurt sound religion and morality."

To this account Bishop Percy adds a note of
great value for its lucid exactitude. "Boswell's
account of the manner in which Johnson compiled
his Dictionary," he says, "is confused and erroneous. He began his task (as he himself expressly
described to me) by devoting his first care to
a diligent perusal of all such English writers as
were most correct in their language, and under
every sentence which he meant to quote he drew
a line, and noted in the margin the first letter of
the word under which it was to occur. He then
delivered these books to his clerks, who transcribed
each sentence on a separate slip of paper and
arranged the same under the word referred to. By
these means he collected the several words, and
their different significations, and when the whole
arrangement was alphabetically formed, he gave
the definitions of their meanings, and collected
their etymologies from Skinner, and other writers
on the subject." To these accounts, Hawkins
adds his usual carping, pompous testimony. "Dr.
Johnson," he says, "who, before this time, together with his wife, had lived in obscurity, lodging
at different houses in the courts and alleys in
and about the Strand and Fleet Street, had, for
the purpose of carrying on this arduous work, and
being near the printers employed in it, taken a
handsome house in Gough Square, and fitted up
a room in it with books and other accommodations
for amanuenses, who, to the number of five or six,
he kept constantly under his eye. An interleaved copy of "Bailey's Dictionary," in folio, he
made the repository of the several articles, and
these he collected by incessantly reading the best
authors in our language, in the practice whereof
his method was to score with a black-lead pencil
the words by him selected. The books he used
for this purpose were what he had in his own
collection, a copious but a miserably ragged one,
and all such as he could borrow; which latter, if
ever they came back to those that lent them, were
so defaced as to be scarce worth owning, and
yet some of his friends were glad to receive and
entertain them as curiosities."

"Mr. Burney," says Boswell, "during a visit to
the capital, had an interview with Johnson in
Gough Square, where he dined and drank tea with
him, and was introduced to the acquaintance of
Mrs. Williams. After dinner Mr. Johnson proposed
to Mr. Burney to go up with him into his garret,
which being accepted, he found there about five or
six Greek folios, a poor writing-desk, and a chair
and a half. Johnson, giving to his guest the entire
seat, balanced himself on one with only three legs
and one arm. Here he gave Mr. Burney Mrs.
Williams's history, and showed him some notes
on Shakespeare already printed, to prove that he
was in earnest. Upon Mr. Burney's opening
the first volume at the Merchant of Venice he
observed to him that he seemed to be more severe
on Warburton than on Theobald. 'Oh, poor
Tib!' said Johnson, 'he was nearly knocked
down to my hands; Warburton stands between
me and him.' 'But, sir,' said Mr. Burney, 'You'll
have Warburton on your bones, won't you?'
'No, sir;' he'll not come out; he'll only growl
in his den.' 'But do you think, sir, Warburton
is a superior critic to Theobald?' 'Oh, sir, he'll
make two-and-fifty Theobalds cut into slices! The
worst of Warburton is that he has a rage for saying
something when there's nothing to be said.' Mr.
Burney then asked him whether he had seen the
letter Warburton had written in answer to a
pamphlet addressed 'to the most impudent man
alive.' He answered in the negative. Mr. Burney
told him it was supposed to be written by Mallet.
A controversy now raged between the friends of
Pope and Bolingbroke, and Warburton and Mallet
were the leaders of the several parties. Mr. Burney
asked him then if he had seen Warburton's book
against Bolingbroke's philosophy! 'No, sir; I
have never read Bolingbroke's impiety, and therefore am not interested about its refutation.'"

Goldsmith appears to have resided at No. 6,
Wine Office Court from 1760 to 1762, during
which period he earned a precarious livelihood by
writing for the booksellers.

They still point out Johnson and Goldsmith's
favourite seats in the north-east corner of the
window of that cozy though utterly unpretentious
tavern, the "Cheshire Cheese," in this court.

It was while living in Wine Office Court that
Goldsmith is supposed to have partly written that
delightful novel "The Vicar of Wakefield," which
he had begun at Canonbury Tower. We like to
think that, seated at the "Cheese," he perhaps
espied and listened to the worthy but credulous
vicar and his gosling son attending to the profound
theories of the learned and philosophic but shifty
Mr. Jenkinson. We think now by the window,
with a cross light upon his coarse Irish features,
and his round prominent brow, we see the watchful
poet sit eyeing his prey, secretly enjoying the
grandiloquence of the swindler and the admiration
of the honest country parson.

"One day," says Mrs. Piozzi, "Johnson was
called abruptly from our house at Southwark,
after dinner, and, returning in about three hours,
said he had been with an enraged author, whose
landlady pressed him within doors while the bailiffs
beset him without; that he was drinking himself drunk with Madeira to drown care, and
fretting over a novel which, when finished, was to
be his whole fortune; but he could not get it done
for distraction, nor dared he stir out of doors to
offer it for sale. Mr. Johnson, therefore," she
continues, "sent away the bottle and went to the
bookseller, recommending the performance, and
devising some immediate relief; which, when he
brought back to the writer, the latter called the
woman of the house directly to partake of punch
and pass their time in merriment. It was not," she
concludes, "till ten years after, I dare say, that
something in Dr. Goldsmith's behaviour struck me
with an idea that he was the very man; and then
Johnson confessed that he was so."

"A more scrupulous and patient writer," says
the admirable biographer of the poet, Mr. John
Forster, "corrects some inaccuracies of the lively
little lady, and professes to give the anecdote
authentically from Johnson's own exact narration.
'I received one morning,' Boswell represents
Johnson to have said, 'a message from poor
Goldsmith, that he was in great distress, and, as
it was not in his power to come to me, begging
that I would come to him as soon as possible. I
sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him
directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was
dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested
him for his rent, at which he was in a violent
passion. I perceived that he had already changed
my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a
glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle,
desired he would be calm, and began to talk to
him of the means by which he might be extricated.
He then told me that he had a novel ready for
the press, which he produced to me. I looked into
it and saw its merits, told the landlady I should
soon return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold
it for £60. I brought Goldsmith the money, and
he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill.'"

The arrest is plainly connected with Newbery's
reluctance to make further advances, and of all
Mrs. Fleming's accounts found among Goldsmith's
papers, the only one unsettled is that for the
summer months preceding the arrest. The manuscript of the novel seems by both statements (in
which the discrepancies are not so great but that
Johnson himself may be held accountable for them)
to have been produced reluctantly, as a last resource; and it is possible, as Mrs. Piozzi intimates,
that it was still regarded as unfinished. But if
strong adverse reasons had not existed, Johnson
would surely have carried it to the elder Newbery.
He did not do this. He went with it to Francis
Newbery, the nephew; does not seem to have
given a very brilliant account of the "merit" he
had perceived in it—four years after its author's
death he told Reynolds that he did not think it
would have had much success—and rather with
regard to Goldsmith's immediate want than to any
confident sense of the value of the copy, asked and
obtained the £60. "And, sir," he said afterwards
"a sufficient price, too, when it was sold, for then
the fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as
it afterwards was, by his 'Traveller,' and the bookseller had faint hopes of profit by his bargain.
After 'The Traveller,' to be sure, it was accidentally
worth more money."

GOUGH SQUARE (see page 118).

WINE OFFICE COURT AND THE "CHESHIRE CHEESE" (see page 122).

On the poem, meanwhile, the elder Newbery
had consented to speculate, and this circumstance
may have made it hopeless to appeal to him with a
second work of fancy. For, on that very day of
the arrest, "The Traveller" lay completed in the
poet's desk. The dream of eight years, the solace
and sustainment of his exile and poverty, verged at
last to fulfilment or extinction, and the hopes and
fears which centred in it doubtless mingled on
that miserable day with the fumes of the Madeira.
In the excitement of putting it to press, which
followed immediately after, the nameless novel
recedes altogether from the view, but will reappear
in due time. Johnson approved the verses more
than the novel; read the proof-sheets for his friend;
substituted here and there, in more emphatic
testimony of general approval, a line of his own;
prepared a brief but hearty notice for the Critical
Review, which was to appear simultaneously with
the poem, and, as the day of publication drew
near, bade Goldsmith be of good heart.

Oliver Goldsmith came first to London in 1756,
a raw Irish student, aged twenty-eight. He was
just fresh from Italy and Switzerland. He had
heard Voltaire talk, had won a degree at Louvaine
or Padua, had been "bear leader" to the stingy
nephew of a rich pawnbroker, and had played the
flute at the door of Flemish peasants for a draught
of beer and a crust of bread. No city of golden
pavement did London prove to those worn and
dusty feet. Almost a beggar had Oliver been,
then an apothecary's journeyman and quack doctor,
next a reader of proofs for Richardson, the novelist
and printer; after that a tormented and jaded usher
at a Peckham school; last, and worst of all, a hack
writer of articles for Griffith's Monthly Review,
then being opposed by Smollett in a rival publication. In Green Arbour Court Goldsmith spent
the roughest part of the toilsome years before
he became known to the world. There he formed
an acquaintance with Johnson and his set, and
wrote essays for Smollett's British Magazine.

Wine Office Court is supposed to have derived
its name from an office where licenses to sell
wine were formerly issued. "In this court," says
Mr. Noble, "once flourished a fig tree, planted a
century ago by the Vicar of St. Bride's, who
resided, with an absence of pride suitable, if
not common, to Christianity, at No. 12. It was a
slip from another exile of a tree, formerly flourishing, in a sooty kind of grandeur, at the sign of
the 'Fig Tree,' in Fleet Street. This tree was
struck by lightning in 1820, but slips from the
growing stump were planted in 1822, in various
parts of England."

The old-fashioned and changeless character of
the "Cheese," in whose low-roofed and sanded
rooms Goldsmith and Johnson have so often hung
up their cocked hats and sat down facing each
other to a snug dinner, not unattended with punch,
has been capitally sketched by a modern essayist,
who possesses a thorough knowledge of the physiology of London. In an admirable paper entitled
"Brain Street," Mr. George Augustus Sala thus
describes Wine Office Court and the "Cheshire
Cheese":—

"The vast establishments," says Mr. Sala, "of
Messrs. Pewter & Antimony, typefounders (Alderman Antimony was Lord Mayor in the year '46);
of Messrs. Quoin, Case, & Chappell, printers to
the Board of Blue Cloth; of Messrs. Cutedge
& Treecalf, bookbinders; with the smaller industries of Scawper & Tinttool, wood-engravers;
and Treacle, Gluepot, & Lampblack, printingroller makers, are packed together in the upper
part of the court as closely as herrings in a
cask. The 'Cheese' is at the Brain Street end.
It is a little lop-sided, wedged-up house, that
always reminds you, structurally, of a highshouldered man with his hands in his pockets.
It is full of holes and corners and cupboards and
sharp turnings; and in ascending the stairs to the
tiny smoking-room you must tread cautiously, if
you would not wish to be tripped up by plates
and dishes, momentarily deposited there by furious
waiters. The waiters at the 'Cheese' are always
furious. Old customers abound in the comfortable
old tavern, in whose sanded-floored eating-rooms
a new face is a rarity; and the guests and the
waiters are the oldest of familiars. Yet the waiter
seldom fails to bite your nose off as a preliminary
measure when you proceed to pay him. How
should it be otherwise when on that waiter's soul
there lies heavy a perpectual sense of injury caused
by the savoury odour of steaks, and 'muts' to
follow; of cheese-bubbling in tiny tins—the
'specialty' of the house; of floury potatoes and
fragrant green peas; of cool salads, and cooler
tankards of bitter beer; of extra-creaming stout
and 'goes' of Cork and 'rack,' by which is meant
gin; and, in the winter-time, of Irish stew and
rump-steak pudding, glorious and grateful to every
sense? To be compelled to run to and fro with
these succulent viands from noon to late at night,
without being able to spare time to consume them
in comfort—where do waiters dine, and when, and
how?—to be continually taking other people's
money only for the purpose of handing it to other
people—are not these grievances sufficient to crossgrain the temper of the mildest-mannered waiter?
Somebody is always in a passion at the 'Cheese:'
either a customer, because there is not fat enough
on his 'point'-steak, or because there is too much
bone in his mutton-chop; or else the waiter is
wrath with the cook; or the landlord with the
waiter, or the barmaid with all. Yes, there is a
barmaid at the 'Cheese,' mewed up in a box not
much bigger than a birdcage, surrounded by groves
of lemons, 'ones' of cheese, punch-bowls, and
cruets of mushroom-catsup. I should not care to
dispute with her, lest she should quoit me over the
head with a punch-ladle, having a William-theThird guinea soldered in the bowl.

"Let it be noted in candour that Law finds its way
to the 'Cheese' as well as Literature; but the Law
is, as a rule, of the non-combatant and, consequently, harmless order. Literary men who have
been called to the bar, but do not practise; briefless
young barristers, who do not object to mingling
with newspaper men; with a sprinkling of retired
solicitors (amazing dogs these for old port-wine;
the landlord has some of the same bin which
served as Hippocrene to Judge Blackstone when
he wrote his 'Commentaries')—these make up
the legal element of the 'Cheese.' Sharp attorneys
in practice are not popular there. There is a
legend that a process-server once came in at a
back door to serve a writ; but being detected
by a waiter, was skilfully edged by that wary
retainer into Wine Bottle Court, right past the
person on whom he was desirous to inflict the
'Victoria, by the grace, &c.' Once in the court,
he was set upon by a mob of inky-faced boys
just released from the works of Messrs. Ball,
Roller, & Scraper, machine printers, and by the
skin of his teeth only escaped being converted
into 'pie.'"

Mr. William Sawyer has also written a very
admirable sketch of the "Cheese" and its oldfashioned, conservative ways, which we cannot
resist quoting:—

"We are a close, conservative, inflexible body
—we, the regular frequenters of the 'Cheddar,'"
says Mr. Sawyer. "No new-fangled notions,
new usages, new customs, or new customers for
us. We have our history, our traditions, and our
observances, all sacred and inviolable. Look
around! There is nothing new, gaudy, flippant, or
effeminately luxurious here. A small room with
heavily-timbered windows. A low planked ceiling.
A huge, projecting fire-place, with a great copper
boiler always on the simmer, the sight of which
might have roused even old John Willett, of the
'Maypole,' to admiration. High, stiff-backed,
inflexible 'settles,' hard and grainy in texture,
box off the guests, half-a-dozen each to a table.
Sawdust covers the floor, giving forth that peculiar
faint odour which the French avoid by the use of
the vine sawdust with its pleasant aroma. The
only ornament in which we indulge is a solitary
picture over the mantelpiece, a full-length of a now
departed waiter, whom in the long past we caused
to be painted, by subscription of the whole room, to
commemorate his virtues and our esteem. He is
depicted in the scene of his triumphs—in the act
of giving change to a customer. We sit bolt upright round our tables, waiting, but not impatient.
A time-honoured solemnity is about to be observed, and we, the old stagers, is it for us to
precipitate it? There are men in this room who
have dined here every day for a quarter of a century
—aye, the whisper goes that one man did it even on
his wedding-day! In all that time the more staid
and well-regulated among us have observed a
steady regularity of feeding. Five days in the
week we have our 'Rotherham steak'—that mystery
of mysteries—or our 'chop and chop to follow,'
with the indispensable wedge of Cheddar—unless
it is preferred stewed or toasted—and on Saturday
decorous variety is afforded in a plate of the worldrenowned 'Cheddar' pudding. It is of this latter
luxury that we are now assembled to partake, and
that with all fitting ceremony and observance. As
we sit, like pensioners in hall, the silence is broken
only by a strange sound, as of a hardly human
voice, muttering cabalistic words, 'Ullo mul lum
de loodle wumble jum!' it cries, and we know
that chops and potatoes are being ordered for
some benighted outsider, ignorant of the fact that
it is pudding-day."